Ritual by David Pinner

by Eoin MacManus •
09.03.2011

Our friends over at Finders Keepers just published their first book, Finders Keepers Forgery Number One : Ritual by David Pinner. We could re-hash what they’ve already written about it but we’re dead busy so won’t bother. Instead we’ll leave it to them to tell youse more…

45 years since its first release, Finders Keepers are proud to present a true modern rarity and historical keystone in the well trodden bridge between occult fiction and cinematic pop culture, with their first foray into literary publishing, in the form of the British novel, ‘Ritual’ by David Pinner. Shrouded in the same brand of mystery and contradiction that forms its tangled plot, this 1965 debut by the RADA-trained playwright, Pinner, is commonly recognised by cult cinema fanatics as the original seed that spawned the towering movie enigma, ‘The Wicker Man’.

‘Ritual’ tells the story of a police officer who is requested to investigate the presumed murder of a child in an obscure rural village. During the protagonist’s short stay, he is subjected to a spectacle of psychological trickery, sexual seduction, ancient religious practices and sacrificial rituals. All these key ingredients were used in the cinematic re-write by Anthony Schaffer, who, six years after the novels’ publication, obtained the film rights with Christopher Lee. Schaffer transformed Pinner’s poetic and hallucinatory sequences into the rural celluloid folk story in Robin Hardy’s ‘The Wicker Man’. This 1973 classic continues to enthral and inspire generations of British movie patrons and folk-pop enthusiasts throughout the world.

As it has commanded price tags as high as £600 by collectors on well-known auction sites, original copies of ‘Ritual’ are almost untraceable. The Finders Keepers Forgery’s debut print-run has been painstakingly reproduced from the author’s own personal copy. It is presented with its original two-colour cover artwork, and is now available in both hardback and paperback editions.